Some Language Help Please
Exactly where in the expression, “it’s none of my business”, does anyone see, expressed or implied, that I would be interested in standing outside in a 106° heat index, mere steps from my air-conditioned home, while my neighbor explains the details of his personal relationship with his girlfriend and the “obvious injustice” she perpetrated by throwing all of his belongings on the front lawn.
My sole connection to this relationship was offering the opinion, when asked, that flowers might be better received on Valentine’s Day than a NASCAR video.
This is time that I will never get back and their fights weren’t even amusing.
9 comments
Sounds like that relationship has a pretty high heat index of its own. Everyone needs someone to talk to, but a neighbor who is not a close friend is not the ideal someone. Does the neighbor also air dirty laundry, the physical kind?
Stella would not be interested in either a NASCAR video or cut flowers. But I do occasionally bring her, unannounced, a book or CD that I know she will like. There are no hard and fast rules in such matters, for women or men. Don’t bring me flowers; I’ll probably start sneezing.
The real trouble comes if you bad-mouth the offending girlfriend, then the couple ends up reconciling.
I have the most glorious picture of Christmas long ago, my mother looking with distaste at the electric frying pan she received from my father.
But she still uses it, and still remembers who gave it to her.
(Yes, I’m back…sort of.)
Ah Andante…glad your back…and that things are going well in the healing dept.
Well, we all get *trapped* sometimes. I’ve had similar moments with ex-sister-in-laws who like nothing better than to harangue (with foul language) about their ex husbands. Oh JOY…nothing Like Family! (*wink*)
“The real trouble comes if you bad-mouth the offending girlfriend, then the couple ends up reconciling.”
For an entertaining time, if you have a deeply sardonic sense of humor, drop in on the local arraignment court especially after a holiday weekend. Everywhere I’ve lived, the courtroom is full of newly sobered-up, smelly, unkempt males hearing the assault and battery charges being read out to them while, in back, their brusied, battered, and black-eyed female victims sit anxiously at the edge of their seats waiting to hear how much the bail is so they can spring their loved ones free from the uncaring grip of the gaoler.
Steve, I took my hint from the fact that there were “words” exchanged for all to hear when he announced he had purchased the gazillion dollar pay-per-view NASCAR package from the cable company, that perhaps she wasn’t a fan. Something about “if I enjoyed car crashes I could drive to Wal-Mart on Saturday”, seemed to indicate less than total dedication to the sport.
Don’t push things, Andante, but it’s nice to see you out and about. Yes, you remember the thought, just like people remember the Hindenburg. A frying pan is at least useful and many guys have a blind spot about “tools”.
Please, Karen, let’s not bring the family cases you can’t avoid into this. The invisible demilitarized zones at family reunions that prevent you from the pie that you really love because it’s on a table in “that” section that “we” can’t visit because of what “he” said about some cousin you have never met.
John, I was the “arresting officer” in some of those cases when I was in law enforcement. Family disturbance was the most dangerous call you got, because you never knew what would happen or who was the real threat.
FACIT [Family and Crisis Intervention Techniques] was a course at the academy and was relevant for family abuse to the war in the Middle East. As the instructor said: it’s just a matter of scale, the dynamics are the same. Israel and Lebanon is a dispute over a fence writ large.
Looking very intently while the other person talks and then saying, plainly, upon their first break in the monologue, “No hablo ingles” and then walking off, works for me…
I have a friend who is a Colombiña. She has the endearing habit of understanding only as much English as she wants. When she feels like it she can be understood in English, Italian, and French as well as Spanish.
I was speaking strickly about the MYOB of being *told* things (in graphic and foul details) that one would Rawther not learn of…but only about regular harangues (the “he-said, she said” types…not about physical abuse. That is quite different.
Noted and assumed. I have called the sheriff in the past and will do so in the future when I suspect anyone getting hit.